Background
Pure Fishing is a leader in outdoor and recreational lifestyle products representing over 30 internationally recognised brands, sold all over the world. The business has operations in 19 countries and a dedicated workforce conversant in 28 languages.
“We run a dynamic business with a lot of moving parts from a brand, product and customer perspective,” said Mitch Birt, ANZ Manager. “Our bespoke B2B was being used by our sales team but lacked the capacity to be a customer-facing solution that our Retail partners could comfortably engage with”.
The Australian fishing industry was still in its infancy with respect to B2B adoption and was still heavily reliant on a Sales Representative based model, centred on a high level of in-store engagement.
“Our sales team were accustomed to the nuances of the current tool and how it dealt with pricing, product filtering and general ordering but it was a big concern pushing it onto our somewhat anti-tech customers, many of whom did not even have POS systems”.
There was the option to invest in internal system updates to make it more palatable to its target audience, but there was still the burden of constant Retailer training and ongoing IT investment to maintain the system’s market viability.
“We also wanted to rid the business of printed catalogues and better manage Retailer requests for digital marketing assets, basic product information such as barcodes and inventory checks. We knew that a customer-facing solution could help with this.
“Our focus really needed to be on building our brands and looking after our customers and consumers,” recalled Mitch, “so a pure-play B2B system that had the capacity to deal with our complexities, be easy to use and known to our Retailers was an attractive option.”
Solution
The Brandscope B2B e-commerce platform was already well established in the Australian and New Zealand fishing markets due to its penetration into the outdoor, sport and leisure retail channels. The system’s unique capacity to manage multiple brands with complicated segmentation and pricing structures, multi-level product filtering across Brand/Division/Segment/Category and the ability to directly integrate with our ERP (SAP) suited the Pure Fishing business model.
The complete stable of brands was loaded onto the Brandscope system under a single release and then segmentation, filtering, pricing and territory allocation tools were applied to coordinate retail views according to Pure Fishing’s business requirements.
“Out of the box, Brandscope could do the vast majority of things that we required from an operational perspective,” recalled Mitch, “but they also worked closely with us on some key custom updates to further refine the functionality to suit our complex wholesale business model”.
“But the real attraction was that the majority of our customers already used the platform for other brands so were very accustomed to logging in, viewing and ordering products, downloading marketing assets and general navigation. Once the SAP integration was in place it was literally a plug-and-play situation and we simply springboarded off Brandscope’s growing market presence.”
The other significant resource draw on the business was the design and printing of catalogues which Retailers were beholden to in the absence of a B2B option.
“Moving away from catalogues was a big concern for us, given everyone’s historical reliance on them for so many years,” stated Mitch. “Brandscope was a valid solution, enabling us to present a live range of constantly changing products to our customers 24/7. Making adjustments at the back-end was also super easy, ensuring that our customers were always looking at accurate product information.”
Outcome
The engagement from Pure Fishing’s retail customer base was instant due to their familiarity with the Brandscope platform and its intuitive flow, making it easy for them to view products, inventory levels, marketing assets and then place refill and pre-book orders.
“It’s been great for our business in that it’s connecting us with remote and smaller format stores that we couldn’t service on a regular cadence due to distance and time restraints”, stated Mitch. “It’s almost like we’re there in-store, working on ranging, whether it’s St Helens, Tasmania or Broome, Western Australia. Customers are also buying with renewed confidence because they can see the inventory levels, know that the product they buy will arrive and are open to trying something a little different simply because it’s so easy to find and order.”
Pure Fishing has also stopped printing catalogues and has invested heavily in maximising the digital environment on Brandscope with informative marketing and educational information that Retailers can also export from the system as required for their POS, B2C and social media platforms.
“Our sales representatives still work intimately with our customer base but we’ve added a whole other level of engagement by providing our customers with a tool that awards them access to an incredible amount of accurate information and immediacy but is also very easy to use.”
“There’s still a lot to do and we’ll always have challenges that push back on new and different ways of doing things which is fine,” stated Mitch. “Our Sales Representatives are seeing the benefits of the system and the incremental benefits of having Brandscope in their sales toolkit as well.”
Testimonial
“Brandscope has provided our Retail customers with a new level of independence in dealing with Pure Fishing. The autonomy has led to greater operational efficiencies and increased sales, especially for our smaller independents who are now revelling in a 24/7 connection to our business across sales, marketing and product education. It’s been a great experience for everyone.”
Background
XTM was born when a handful of influential friends put their heads together. During a 1999 brainstorming session, Peter Forras, Gary “X” Rae and Bill “The Uncle” Dalton sat down in a spirit of competitiveness, irreverence and deep respect, to explore what their combined lifetimes of snow expertise could teach them. The three decided to create a brand that would change the face of Australia’s snow sports industry and show the world that Australia is a country to be taken seriously in Winter sports.
The brand’s value proposition was high quality product at an affordable price resulting in a massive clientele base from on-mountain stores to city based boutique Retail outlets. They also had their sights set firmly on the overall outdoor market which offered a product synergy and global aspirations to distribute into North America and Europe.
“We wanted to extend our global reach” says XTM founder Peter Foras ” but also to better service our more isolated customers that were close to the mountains. We needed to tell people our story and make it super easy for them to support us. As we grew, I also wanted to be mindful of our headcount to ensure we expanded in an efficient and streamlined manner”.
Solution
XTM engaged with Brandscope and loaded consecutive pre-book and in-season releases onto the platform along with a magnitude of marketing and technical product information to drive brand awareness. Brandscope was then integrated into the SAP Business One system to deliver greater backend efficiencies with ordering and inventory control. Sales Agents and internal staff were then educated on the system and Retail partners prepped in readiness to pre-book launches. As a latter step, international catalogues were loaded at specific currencies to service a growing network of global distributors.
“The onboarding process was very well executed and you could tell very quickly that Brandscope was going to be a solid long term partnership”, recalls Peter. “Implementing new technology into a traditional business full of old heads was daunting but the structures were there to guide the team along, which resulted in a quick update by everyone involved”.
Outcome
The new online ordering process was immediately embraced by a solid portion of the Retailer clientele with pre-book orders quickly flowing into the SAP ERP. Refill orders soon followed as the system continued to entrench and the more isolated accounts began to increase order volumes because “it was easy to use and access” (some accounts grew by over 400%).
“By giving our trade partners the ability to see our stock availability and allow them to order 24/7 as opposed to office hours has been the main refill driver. It has also been a perfect marriage for those retailers who prefer to buy without sales rep input directly from the screen, they have effectively quadrupled their budget with us as it is their preferred way to buy”.
Marketing campaigns were later launched to further incentivise brand and specific categories. Distributors also rallied behind the system to place bulk future orders for respective territories.
“Embracing the platform into the business created true win/win benefits for our old and new customers, agents, distributors and our bottom line in broad cost savings’, said Peter. “Everyone found the system to be very intuitive and effective, and it’s consequently evolved into a essential part of our business in an effort to sell more, reduce costs and expand our domestic and international distribution.”
Testimonial
“We chose Brandscope first and foremost after consultations with leading retailers that use a combination of multiple online ordering platforms and traditional methods. It became clear to us that they placed all their Brandscope orders first due to the speed and ease of using the platform.”
Background
Unify Brand Partnerships (UBP) is a UK based distributor of sport, outdoor and lifestyle brands throughout the UK.
Management formulated a high growth strategy which included the addition of an online B2B system capability to market and sell our products.
The B2B needed to:
- easily provide product and marketing information to Customers
- support the pre-book and refill sales process
- enable Customers to place pre orders easily and review real time stock availability to purchase in season stock
- support Internal Teams in processing the increased volume of orders more efficiently
The UBP business needed to introduce automations that would protect against the expected parallel costs in taking on additional resources to support the growth.
Taking on new brands to drive growth is a big commitment, outlined Dominic Flanagan, Head of Finance at UBP. “Our systems need to be able to deal with the associated challenges to deliver the desired growth. Automation and delivery of efficiencies was required to support the management of increased Customer Service workload, the generation of catalogues, samples and showrooms that really ate into the profit of each new acquisition.
We’d never engaged with B2B before but were impressed with Brandscope’s functionality, intimate knowledge of the nuances around the wholesale process and overall capacity to deliver cost saving automations and more streamlined procedures.”
The other challenge was collating, analysing and formulating bulk purchase orders to support manufacturing and pre-book demands within a very tight window, a situation expected to worsen as the brand volumes grew.
“Due to the high volume of pre-booking, we needed to get the final bulk orders completed within deadlines,” recalled Dominic. “If we could secure and process orders faster we would have more time to review the buy, resulting in greater ordering accuracy, with better and faster decision making on additional inventory purchases.”
Solution
UBP considered a number of B2B options and identified Brandscope as the right solution to support the targeted growth.
UBP engaged with Brandscope and spent ten weeks integrating their Orderwise ERP to automate order, inventory and product information data flows between the two systems, while loading the seasonal pre-book releases for their first four brands. Due to the complicated nature of the territory set-ups, pricing and segmentation modules were also introduced to ensure correct views for Retailer partners at product level.
“The onboarding process was very fluid and we found the Brandscope team to be highly efficient and supportive in the overall process, from a technical and non-technical point of view”, said Dominic. “They spent a lot of time with our internal team workshopping our processes and market interaction to ensure that pricing, market segmentation, territory structures and information feeds were all optimised by implementing the right modules. Management, Marketing, Sales, IT and Customer Service departments were all involved in this process. Integration, support and ongoing service is great.”
Outcome
The impact on pre-book timelines was dramatic, with orders being received into the Orderwise ERP 200% faster than prior seasons awarding UBC with more time to review and then formulate bulk orders.
“Pre-books came in faster, but we could also report on the orders that were still in motion (buy plans) giving us visibility on popular Retailer styles. By having this information, we were able to order additional stock against trending styles which fuelled in-season refill and gave us greater control over stock obsolescence. This is extremely key in helping to manage inventory exposure and capital risk.”
The administration weight on internal resources also diminished (despite new brands coming online) due to orders being received directly into the ERP from the retailer or sales representatives, and Retailers having greater access to information like marketing assets, barcodes, product specifications to self-manage.
“By engaging the Retailers in the system,” said Dominic, “it’s allowed us to do more with less but also refocus internal energies into areas that really help our partners as opposed to double processing data.”
“Brandscope’s functionality is closely aligned with the nuances of wholesaling and it’s very apparent that the system has been well thought out with respect to real life application,” says Dominic. “This was particularly relevant with pricing, but also in defining territories, product segmentation and custom filtering to ensure that our Retailer buyers were always seeing information that was specifically relevant to their own business. This really instilled confidence in the tool which will continue to equate to greater engagement.”
Overall we are very pleased with the decision to engage Brandscope as our B2B Solution.
Testimonial
“The Brandscope software platform is backed by business processes, as much as it is technology, focussed on streamlining traditional wholesale methods and delivering both profitability and scalability. If your strategy is to grow fast on limited resources and capital, then it’s built for you.”
Background
Russell Corporation is a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway with a wholesale focus on manufacture and distribution of the Sherrin and Spalding brand. The business was configured towards traditional sales methods based on a network of sales representatives and independent Agents who serviced a high volume of leisure and sporting retail stores and clubs. The product release program supported both pre-book and refill of set lines.
“There was a massive reliance on our sales team to be everywhere at once to drive our sales program”, said Nathan Collins, Sales Director “which impeded our efficiencies to launch quickly into the marketplace and pick up refill orders in between our team’s in-store visits. We also saw value time saving efficiencies that a B2B could bring to our team which would allow them to focus on other projects such as broadening distribution, working closer with major accounts and generally working on brand awareness and dollars per door”.
Solution
Implementation of Brandscope B2B platform into the Russell Corporation wholesale business with a complete integration into Microsoft Navision. The 2019 Spalding and Sherrin in-season catalogues were then uploaded and digital flyers distributed to Retail partners to advise how to use the system to view and purchase. Sales teams were then workshopped on best practices and the system officially launched.
“We were all very committed to getting behind the tool and supporting our sales team as much as possible in the transition”, recalls Nathan, “and Brandscope were very thorough in their support mechanisms. It was obvious that the training team had comprehensive knowledge of the mechanics of the wholesale sales process and garnered support from our team quickly.”
Outcome
The sales team gradually embraced the power of the platform and took more control of the pre-book ordering process by constructing multi-month assortments resulting in deeper and broader commitments. Retailers also engaged gradually and started collaborating with their sales representatives with both pre-book and refill ordering, becoming more independent and taking greater control of their own ranging. Retailer feedback suggested that “shopping on their own terms” resulted in more experimental buying and aggressive replenishment on key selling styles. It also led to greater commitment with clearance given the ease of viewing and ordering.
“There was a real surge of engagement in the brands once retailers started using the tool,” said Nathan. “Giving our partners more control over their ordering process and greater access to accurate information really took their confidence in the Russell Corporation to another level. It was the same for our sales team who suddenly had more time to focus on the business as opposed to constantly being in the business and channel their energies into areas that provided the greatest return. They also had access to live information and could quickly communicate opportunities to many Retailers quickly. It’s been a great move for the business as a whole, which is very mature, and will set us up for a push into New Zealand providing internal efficiencies and growing sales.”
Testimonial
“Engaging with Brandscope was like turning a light on in a dark warehouse. Our sales team and retail partners suddenly had a level of inventory visibility that immediately converted to increased sales. We also saw a much higher level of collaboration between them due to the platforms shared order creation functionality which completely busted the myth that digital B2B inhibits personal relationships. If anything, it fostered commercial relationships.”
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